An Office, Rotterdam, Tuesday Late Afternoon

[lockestheway]

A couple of hours after Peter had finally gone to bed, Suriyawong had knocked on his door and cleared his throat. Ah, right: any urge to flop around like a pathetic, whiny whale, the way he might have done two years ago, that would have to wait. There was work to be done.

He was outside and on his plane only three hours after sending Valentine the email.

---


Mazer Rackham sat across from Peter in his office in Rotterdam.

"We're very concerned," said Rackham.

"So am I."

"What have you set in motion here, Peter?"

"Mazer," said Peter, "all I've done is keep pressing, using what small tools I have. They decide how to respond to that pressure. I was prepared for an invasion of Armenia or Nubia. I was prepared to take advantage of a mass expulsion of Muslims from some or all European nations."

"And war between India and China? Are you prepared for that?"

"These are your geniuses, Mazer. Yours and Graff's. You trained them. You explain to me why Alai and Virlomi are doing something so stupid and suicidal as to throw badly armed Indian troops against Han Tzu's battle-hardened, fully equipped, revenge-hungry army."

"So that's not something you did."

"I'm not like you and Graff," said Peter, irritated. "I don't think I'm some master puppeteer. I've got this amount of power and influence in the world, and it doesn't amount to much. I have a billion or so citizens who have not yet become a genuine nation, so I have to keep dancing just to keep the FPE viable. I have a military force which is well trained and well equipped, has excellent morale, and is so small it wouldn't even be noticed on a battlefield in China or India. I have my personal reputation as Locke and my not-so-empty-anymore office as Hegemon. And I have Bean, both his actual abilities and his extravagant reputation. That's my arsenal. Do you see anything in that list that would allow me to even think of starting a war between two major world powers over whom I have no influence?"

"It just played into your hands so nicely, we couldn't help but think you had something to do with it."

"No, you did," said Peter. "You made these kids crazy in Battle School. Now they're all mad kings, using the lives of their subjects as playing pieces in a tawdry game of one-upmanship."

Rackham sat back, looking a little sick. "We didn't want this either. And I don't think they're crazy. Somebody must see some advantage in starting this war, and yet I can't think who. You're the only one who stands to gain, so we thought..."

"Believe it or not," said Peter, "I would not start a war like this, even if I thought I could profit from picking up the pieces. The only people who start wars that are bound to depend on human waves getting cut down by machine guns are fanatics or idiots. I think we can safely rule out idiocy. So ... that leaves Virlomi."

"That's what we're afraid of. That she's actually come to believe her image. God-blessed and irresistible." Rackham raised an eyebrow. "But you knew that. You met with her."

"She proposed marriage to me," said Peter. "I turned her down."

"Before she went to Alai."

"I have a feeling that she married Alai on the rebound."

Rackham laughed. "She offered you India."

"She offered me an entanglement. I turned it into an opportunity."

"You knew when you turned her down that she'd be angry and do something stupid."

Peter shrugged. "I knew she'd do something spiteful. Something to show her power. I had no idea she'd try Alai, and I certainly had no idea he'd actually fall for it. Didn't he know she was crazy? I mean, not clinically, but drunk on power."

"You tell me why he did it," said Rackham.

"He was one of Ender's Jeesh," said Peter. "You and Graff must have so much paper on Alai that you know when he scratches his butt."

Rackham only waited.

"Look, I don't know why he did it, except maybe he thought he could control her," said Peter. "When he came home from Eros, he was a naive and righteous Muslim boy who's been sheltered ever since. Maybe I was wrong; maybe he wasn't hung up on my brother. Maybe he just wasn't ready to deal with a real live woman. The question now is, how will this play out?"

"How do you think it will play out?"

"Why should I tell you what I think?" said Peter. "What possible advantage will I get from you and Graff knowing what I'm expecting and what I'm preparing to do about it?"

"How will it hurt?"

"It'll hurt because if you decide your goals are different from mine, you'll meddle. Some of your meddling I've appreciated, but right now I don't want either the I.F. or ColMin doing one damn thing. I'm juggling too many balls to want some volunteer juggler to come in and try to help."

Rackham laughed. "Peter, Graff was so right about you."

"What?"

"When he rejected you for Battle School."

"Because I was too aggressive," said Peter wryly. "And look what he actually accepted."

"Peter," said Rackham. "Think about what you just said."

Peter thought about it. "You mean about juggling."

"I mean about why you were rejected for Battle School."

Peter immediately felt stupid. His parents had been told that he was rejected because he was too aggressive - dangerously so. And he had wormed that information out of them at a very young age. Ever since then, it had been a burden he carried around inside - the judgment that he was dangerous.

Sometimes it had made him bold; more often, it had made him not trust his own judgment, his own moral framework. Am I doing this because it's right? Am I doing this because it will really be to my benefit? Or only because I'm aggressive and can't stand to sit back and wait? He had forced himself to be more patient, more subtle than his first impulse. Time after time he had held back. (And sometimes, when it mattered, he failed to - Envy had been a good, if ultimately painful, test.)

It was because of this that he had used Valentine and now Petra to write the more dangerous, demagogic essays - he didn't want any kind of textual analysis to point to him as the author. It was why he had held back from any kind of serious arm-twisting with nations that kept playing with him about joining the FPE - he couldn't afford to have anyone perceive him as coercive.

And all this time, that assessment of him was a lie.

"I'm not too aggressive," he echoed softly, blinking rapidly.

"It's impossible to be too aggressive for Battle School," said Rackham. "Reckless - now, that would be dangerous. But nobody has ever called you reckless, have they? And your parents would have known that was a lie, because they could have seen what a calculating little bastard you were, even at the age of seven."

"Why thanks."

"No, Graff looked at your tests and watched what the monitor showed us, and then he talked to me and showed me, and we realized: You weren't what we wanted as commander of the army, because people don't love you. Sorry, but it's true. You're not warm. You don't inspire devotion. You would have been a good commander under someone like Ender. But you could never have held the whole thing together the way he did."

Peter's back hit his seat. People don't love you. The statement hit a particularly weird sting right now, and he couldn't resist a snappy, "I'm doing fine now, thanks."

"You're not commanding soldiers. Peter, do Bean or Suri love you? Would they die for you? Or do they serve you because they believe in your cause?"

"They think the world united under me as Hegemon would be better than the world united under anyone else, or not united at all."

"A simple calculation."

"A calculation based on trust that I've damn well earned."

"But not personal devotion," said Rackham. He paused. "Except for one - we were never able to figure her out. I'm actually surprised you didn't bring her with you today."

Peter's mouth did a strange, twitchy dance, as if trying to fit into several expressions at once before it smoothed back down to his usual poker face. "Envy won't be attending Hegemony functions any longer, secret or otherwise."

"Why not?"

"Let's say I'm trying to prevent my entanglement from turning into someone else's opportunity," Peter said, "And we'll leave it at that." He'd rather avoid any further discussion of that one, so he segued smoothly. "You missed Valentine, by the way; my lovely sister, who pretty much hated me."

"Too strong, Peter. Too strong a word. She didn't trust you. She feared you. She saw your mind like clockwork. Very smart. She always figured you were six steps ahead of her."

Peter shrugged.

"But you weren't, were you?"

"Ruling the world isn't a chess game," said Peter. "Or if it is, it's a game with a thousand powerful pieces and eight billion pawns, and the pieces keep changing their capabilities, and the gameboard never stays the same. So just how far ahead can you possibly see? All I could do was put myself into a position with the most possible influence, and then exploit whatever opportunities came."

Rackham nodded. "But one thing was certain. Your off-the-charts aggressiveness, your passion to control events, we knew that you would place yourself in the center of everything."

It was Peter's turn to laugh. "So you left me home from Battle School so I would be what I am now."

"As I said, you weren't suited for military life. You don't take orders very well." Was Peter imagining it, or did Mazer have something of a gleam in his eyes when he said, "People aren't devoted to you, and you aren't devoted to anyone else."

It was true, that was the thing. Yesterday had proven it, regardless of any lies Peter might have told himself. Another one was right on his tongue, but he couldn't spit it out, so he just looked blankly back at Mazer.

"The only person you ever respected enough for it is on a colony ship right now and you'll never see him again," Mazer said.

"I could never have followed Ender."

"No, you never could. But he's the only person you respected enough. The trouble was, he was your younger brother. You couldn't have lived with the shame."

Peter sighed, stretching his legs out under the table. Was Mazer right? Probably. Was he decidedly not in the frame of mind where he wanted to dive that deeply into himself? Yes. He'd come here for the work, after all. "Well, all this analysis is nice, but how does it help us now?"

"We don't have a plan either, Peter," said Rackham. "We're also just moving useful pieces into place. Taking others out of play. We have some assets, just as you do. We have our arsenal."

"You have the whole I.F. You could put a stop to all of this."

"No," said Rackham. "Polemarch Chamrajnagar is adamant about it, and he's right. We could force the world's armies to come to a halt. They would all obey us or pay a terrible price. But who would be ruling the world then?"

"The fleet."

"And who is the fleet? It's volunteers from Earth. And from that moment on, who would be our volunteers? People who love the idea of going out into space? Or people who want to control the government of Earth? It would turn us into an Earth-centered institution. It would destroy the colonization project. And the Fleet would be hated, because it would soon be dominated by people who loved power."

Peter chuckled softly. "Makes you sound like a bunch of nervous virgins."

"We are," said Rackham. "And that's a strange line, coming from a nervous virgin like you."

Peter didn't bother responding to that. Partly because it was an ad hominem, and partly because the only thing he had was to point out he wasn't a virgin, actually, which was the pettiest thing in the world. "So you and Graff won't do anything that would compromise the purity of the I.F."

"Unless somebody brings out the nukes again. We won't let that happen. Two nuclear wars were enough."

"We never had a nuclear war."

"World War II was a nuclear war," said Rackham. "Even if only two bombs were dropped. And the bomb that destroyed Mecca was the end of a civil war within Islam being fought out through surrogates and terrorism. Ever since then, nobody has even considered using nukes. But wars that are ended by nukes are nuclear wars."

"Fine. Definitions."

"Hyrum and I are doing everything we can," said Rackham. "So is the Polemarch. And believe it or not, we're trying to help you. We want you to succeed."

"And now you're pretending that you've been rooting for me all along?"

"Not at all," said Rackham. "We had no idea whether you'd be a tyrant or a wise ruler. No idea of what method you'd use or what your world government would be like. We knew you couldn't do it by charisma because you don't have much. And I'll admit you emerged with greater clarity after we got a good look at Achilles."

"So you didn't really get behind me until you realized I was better than Achilles."

"Your achievements were so extraordinary that we were still wary of you. Then Achilles showed us that you were actually cautious and self-restrained, compared to what could have been done by somebody who was truly ruthless. We saw a tyrant on the make, and we realized you weren't one."

"Depending on how you define 'tyrant.' "

"Peter, we're trying to help you. We want you to unite the world under civilian government. Without any advice from us, you've determined to do it by persuasion and plebiscite instead of using armies and terror."

"I use armies," Peter pointed out.

"You know what I mean," said Rackham.

"I just didn't want you to have any illusions."

"So tell me what you're thinking. What you're planning. So we won't interfere with our meddling."

"Because you're on my side," Peter said scornfully.

"No, we're not 'on your side.' We're not really in this game, except insofar as it affects us. We're in the business of dispersing the human race to as many worlds as possible. But so far, only two colony ships have taken off. And it will be another generation before any of them lands. Far longer before we know whether the colonies will take hold and succeed. Even longer than that before we know if they'll become isolated worlds or trade will be profitable enough to make interstellar travel economically feasible. That's all we care about. But to accomplish it, we have to get recruits from Earth, and we have to pay for the ships-again, from Earth. And we have to do it without any hope of financial return for a hundred years at the best. Capitalism is not good at thinking a hundred years ahead. So we need government funding."

"Which you've managed to get even when I couldn't raise a dime."

"No, Peter," said Rackham. "Don't you understand? Everybody except the United States and Britain and a handful of smaller countries has stopped paying their assessments. We're living off our huge cash reserves. It's been enough to outfit two ships, to build a new class of gravity-controlled messenger ships, a few projects like that. But we're running out of money. We have no way to finance even the ships we already have under construction."

Realization dawned on Peter at last. "You want me to win so I'll pay for your fleet." Well, at least their reasons were pure.

"We want you to win so that the human race can stop spending its vast surpluses on ways to kill each other, and can instead send all the people that would have been killed in war out into space. And all the money that would have been spent on weapons can be spent on colony ships, and on trading ships, eventually. The human race has always produced a vast surplus of human beings and of wealth, and it has used up almost all of it either on stupid monuments like the pyramids or on brutal, bloody, pointless wars. We want you to unite the world so that this waste can finally stop."

Oh, god. Was Rackham giving him the propaganda speech? Peter gave a little wave of his hand and laughed. "You are such dreamers. Such idealists!" Then he almost turned to see if Envy was amused, too, and suddenly it wasn't as funny anymore.

"We were warriors and we studied our enemy," Mazer said flatly. "The Hive Queens. They failed because they were too unified. Human beings are a better design for a sentient species. Once we get over this war thing. What the Hive Queens tried, we can do. Spread out the species so it can develop truly new cultures."

So yes, Mazer was seriously hitting him with the propaganda speech. "New cultures? When you insist that each colony be made up entirely of people from one nation, one language group?"

"We're not absolutely rigid on that, but yes. There are two ways of looking at species diversity. One is that every colony should contain a complete copy of the whole human race-every culture, every language, every race. But what's the point of that? Earth already has that! And look how well it's worked. No, the great colonies of the past have succeeded precisely because they were internally unified. People who knew each other, trusted each other, shared the same purposes, embraced the same laws. Each one monochromatic to begin with. But when we send out fifty monochromatic colony ships, but all different colors, so to speak - fifty different colonies, each with a separate cultural and linguistic root - then the human race can perform fifty different experiments. Real species diversity."

Oh, for the love of God. Was Mazer trying to sell him on paying for his colonization project, or trying to sell him on running off to another planet, the way he'd sent Ender off to another planet?

"I don't care what you say," said Peter, "I'm not going."

Rackham smiled. "We don't want you to."

"The two colony ships you've launched. One of them was Ender's."

"That's right."

"Who's the commander of the second ship?"

"Well, the ship is commanded by-"

"Who's going to rule the colony," said Peter, rolling his eyes.

"Dink Meeker."

So that was the plan. They meant to take Ender's Jeesh and anybody else who was dangerously talented in a military way and send them off into space. It was good to know that Mazer had finally come around to his way of thinking on that one. "So to you," said Peter, "this war between Han Tzu and Alai is your worst nightmare."

Rackham nodded.

"Don't worry," said Peter.

"Don't worry?"

"All right," said Peter. "Worry if you want. But your offer to Ender's Jeesh, to take them all off planet, to give them colonies - now I understand what it's about. You care about these kids whose lives you coopted. You want to get them off to worlds where there's no rival. They can use their talents to help a community triumph over a new world."

"Yes."

"But the most important thing is, they won't be on Earth."

Rackham shrugged.

"You knew that nobody could ever unite the world as you need it to be united while those highly trained, highly aggressive, publicly certified geniuses are still in it."

"We didn't see a way it could happen."

"Well, that's a lie," said Peter. "You saw the way it would happen, because it's obvious. One of them would be the ruler of Earth, and all the others would be dead."

"Yes, we saw that, but it wasn't an option."

Peter shifted. "Why not? It's the human way of settling things."

"We love these kids, Peter."

"But love them or not, they'll all die eventually. No, I think you would have been content to let them work it out, if you thought it would work," Peter said. He leaned forward over the table. "If you thought one of them would emerge triumphant. What you couldn't stand was the knowledge that they were so evenly matched that none of them would win. They'd use up the resources of Earth, all that surplus population, and still there'd be no clear winner."

"That wouldn't help anything," said Rackham.

"So if you could have found a cure for Bean's condition, you wouldn't need me. Because Bean could do it. He could defeat the others. He could unite the world. Because he's so much better than they are."

"But he's going to die," said Rackham.

"And you love him," said Peter. "So you're going to try to save his life." All this affection; it might almost make one sentimental, if one didn't know how badly these men had screwed up these kids to begin with.

"We want him to help you win first."

"That's not possible," said Peter. "Not in the time he has left."

"By 'win,' " said Rackham, "I mean, we want him to help you get into a position where your victory is inevitable, given your abilities. Right now, you could be stopped by all kinds of chance events. Having Bean increases your power and influence. Another thing that would help is if we could get the rest of the Jeesh off this planet. If we've removed from the board all the pieces that could challenge you - if, in effect, you're the queen in a game of knights and bishops - then you won't need Bean anymore."

Ha. The Queen. "I'll need somebody," said Peter. "I'm not trained for war the way these Battle School kids were. And as you said, I'm not the kind of guy that soldiers want to die for."

Rackham leaned forward. "Peter, tell us what you're planning."

"I'm not planning anything," said Peter. People were always asking him that; no matter how often he told them he was just flying by the seat of his pants, they kept asking. "I'm simply waiting. When I met Virlomi, I realized that she was the key to everything. She's volatile, she's powerful, and she's drunk. I knew that she'd do something destabilizing. Something that would break things apart."

"So you think the war between India and China will happen? And that Alai's Muslim League will be drawn into it?"

"That's possible," said Peter. "I hope it won't happen." But it would. And he knew it.

"But if it does, you'll be poised to attack Alai when his forces are tied up fighting China."

"No," said Peter.

"No?"

"We're not going to attack anybody," he said. He shrugged.

"Then ... what?" said Rackham. "Whoever emerges from that war-"

"I don't think that war's going to amount to much," said Peter, "if it happens at all. But if it does happen, then both sides will be weakened by it. There's no shortage of ambitious nations ready to step in and pick up the pieces."

It was funny to realize that two days ago, he'd been cautiously looking forward to telling Envy about all of this, because she'd been gone for what felt like increasingly large portions of time and she'd missed half the maneuvering. She'd have understood.

Maybe.

"So what do you think is going to happen?"

"I don't know," said Peter. "I wish you'd believe me. There's only one thing I'm sure of. Alai's and Virlomi's marriage is doomed. And if you want either or both of them to command any of your precious colonies, you'd better make sure you're ready to get them off planet fast."

"Are you planning something?" asked Rackham.

"No! Aren't you listening? I'm watching the whole damn thing just like you are! I've already played my cards - making the Muslim leadership suspicious of my intentions. Provoking them. Plus a little quiet diplomacy."

"With whom?"

"With Russia," said Peter.

"You're trying to get them to join with you in attacking Alai? Or China?"

"No, no, no," said Peter. "If I tried anything like that, word would get out, and then what Muslim nation would ever, ever join the FPE?"

"So what are you doing with your diplomacy?"

"Begging the Russians to stay out of it."

"In other words, pointing out the opportunity and telling them that you're not going to interfere in any way."

"Yes," said Peter.

"Politics is so ... indirect."

Peter allowed himself a smirk. "That's why conquerors rarely make great rulers."

"And great rulers are rarely conquerors."

"You closed the door on my becoming a conqueror," said Peter. He sobered. "So if I'm to be the ruler of the world - a good one - then I have to win that position in such a way as not to have to keep killing people in order to stay in power. It does the world no good if everything depends on me, if it all collapses when I die. I need to build this thing piece by piece, bit by bit, with powerful institutions that have their own momentum, so that it will make very little difference who's at the head. It's what I learned from growing up in America. It was a nation created out of nothing - nothing but a set of ideals that they never measured up to. Now and then they had great leaders, but usually nothing but political hacks, and I mean right from the start. Washington was great, but Adams was paranoid and lazy, and Jefferson was as vile a scheming politician as a nation has ever been cursed with. I learned a lot from him about destroying your enemies with demagoguery conducted under pseudonyms."

"So you were praising him."

"I'm saying that America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive. I'm trying to do the same thing with the Free People of Earth. Base it on some simple but workable ideals. Bring nations into it because they freely choose to join. Unite them with a language and a system of laws, and give them a stake in institutions that take on a life of their own. And I can't do any of that if I conquer a single country and force it to join. That's a rule I can never violate. My forces will defeat enemies who attack the FPE, and we'll carry war into their territory to do it. But when it comes to joining the FPE, they can only do it if a majority of the people want to. If they choose to be subject to our laws and take part in our institutions."

"But you're not above getting other nations to do your conquering for you."

"I'm not letting anyone conquer anything for me," Peter said. "I hope no one tries to do any further conquering. But if they didn't, you probably wouldn't be needing me; there'd be peace."

"You don't think Alai will--"

"Alai is a decent guy," said Peter. "I think he has some idea of liberalizing his Caliphate from the top. But it can't be done. He's simply wrong. He's a general, not a politician, and too many in his organisation want blood."

"So Alai is doomed to fail."

"Alai is doomed to die. The moment the fanatics realize that he's not as fanatic as they are, they'll kill him."

"And install a new Caliph?"

"They can install whoever they want," said Peter. "It won't matter to me. Without Alai, there's no Islamic unity, because only Alai can lead them to victory. And historically, in defeat, Muslims don't stay united. They move like a great wave - until they meet a wall of rock that doesn't move. Then they crash and recede."

"As they did after Charles Martel defeated them."

"It's Alai who made them powerful," said Peter. "The only trouble is, Alai doesn't like the things he has to do in order to rule a totalitarian system like this. He's already killed a lot more people than he wanted to. Alai's not a killer, but he's become one, and he likes it less and less."

"You think he's not going to follow Virlomi into war."

"It's a race," said Peter. "Between followers of Alai who plan to kill Virlomi in order to free Alai from her influence, and fanatics who plan to kill Alai for marrying Virlomi in the first place."

"Do you know who the conspirators are?"

"I don't have to," said Peter. "If there weren't any conspirators planning murder, it wouldn't be a religious empire. And there's another race. Can they kill Alai or Virlomi before China or Russia attacks? And even if they do kill one or both of them, will that stop China or Russia from attacking, or simply encourage them to think that victory will be more likely?"

"And is there any scenario where you'll go to war?"

"Yes," said Peter. "If they get rid of Virlomi, and Russia and China don't attack, then Alai - or his successor, if they kill him, too - will be pushed into attacking Armenia and Nubia. And that's a war I'm ready to fight. We'll destroy them. We'll be the rock against which the Caliphate crashes and breaks into pieces."

"And if Russia or China does attack them before they can turn to you, then you still profit from the war as frightened nations unite with you against either Russia or China- whichever country is seen as the aggressive, dangerous one."

"It's like I said," Peter answered. "I have no idea how things will turn out. I just know that I'm ready to take advantage of every situation I can think of. And I'm watching very closely so that if something happens that I haven't foreseen, I can take advantage of it."

"So here's the key question," said Rackham. "It's the information I came here to get."

"I'm dying to hear."

"How long are you going to need Bean?"

Peter thought about that one for a while. Sitting back, quiet in his chair, rolling his mind over the question. The truth was, he'd like to have Bean around as long as possible just to have someone to bounce ideas off of - something that was becoming increasingly important of late. But he didn't need Bean for it.

"I've had to make my plans knowing that he was going to die. Or, once you made your offer, leave. So the answer is, as long as I have him, of course I'll use him, either to intimidate would-be enemies, or to command my forces when we go to war. But if he dies or leaves, I can make do. My plans don't depend on having Bean."

His plans didn't depend on having anyone in particular.

"So if he left in three months..."

"Rackham, have you already found his other children? Is that what you're saying? Have you found them and you aren't telling him and Petra because you think I need Bean?"

"Not all of them."

"You're cold. You're such bastards," said Peter. He let out a huff of air. "You're still using children as your tools."

"Yes," said Rackham. "We're bastards. But we mean well. Just like you."

Peter's expression softened. "Give Bean and Petra their babies. And save his life, if you can," he said quietly. "He's a good man who deserves better than to have you toy with him any longer."

[[ NFB, NFI, ooc-okay! taken from shadow of the giant, adapted for setting and to take out 95% of the islamophobia, sigh, osc. i nearly made the cut a 'the room where it happens' joke and it's all nu's fault. ]]